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Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

MACKINAC ISLAND — Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus laid out a four-pronged plan for strengthening the party in a speech to the Michigan GOP Friday night, including moving the 2016 national convention to June from late August and strictly limiting the number of presidential debates.

“This is not an establishment takeover -- this is using your brain,” Priebus said in a dinner speech at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island.

States that try to jump ahead on their agreed primary dates, as Michigan has done in the past, will receive “a death penalty,” not a slap on the wrist, Priebus told attendees. Instead of losing half their convention delegates, states that jump ahead will only receive nine delegates, he said.

The lengthy string of debates, which he called “the 23-debate traveling circus” from the 2012 GOP nominating process, also must end, Priebus said. Instead, there will be maybe seven or eight debates and the party will be involved in deciding who the debate partners and moderators will be, he said.

Candidates who participate in unsanctioned debates will be penalized by losing 30% of their delegates, he said.

Priebus, from Wisconsin, has been Republican National Committee chairman since 2011.

Lansing-area Republican consultant Stu Sandler said after the speech that an earlier convention makes sense.

“What Reince is talking about is the ability to spend money strategically,” Sandler said. “The Democratic Party defined Romney very early, and he never had a chance to recover.”

Priebus also called for a massive and permanent ground game that would include stronger appeals to minority voters.

“Our party cannot compete at the national level by being a party that shows up once every four years, five months before an election in 10 states,” he said.

Backing the ground game will be $40 million invested in improved computer databases and tracking systems, Priebus said. The party recently hired a top software engineer away from Facebook and has opened a Silicon Valley office, he said.

Priebus said the party also has to tell its story and improve its own branding.

“We’re the party of freedom and opportunity and equality, but you wouldn’t know it, because we don’t talk about it,” he said.

“It’s the other party that has a shameful history, not us,” he said in an apparent reference to support for slavery.

“We need to tell people what we’re all about instead of running from the word Republican.”